Printing maps for Press

Sarahg

Posted 10 December 2008 - 12:44 PM

I have been recommended to post this here so I hope someone might have some useful suggestions for me.

Does anyone have a suggestion for the best way to print really good clean colours for thematic maps which can then be printed in the newspapers?

For instance does any one have a good resource of what colours work well together and are recommended for print on press printers? (I am sure there must be some good resources here - just can't find any!). I use colorbrewer.org for colours usually but these are not quite good enough for press prints so I need some ideas!

I need a sequential scale - not too many colours - about 5 usually. I am using Mapinfo and have to use this as I have scripts which are creating the maps. The colours in Mapinfo are also not quite the same on output when exported as .jpg for example so I wonder if anyone has any good suggestions for this? I expect I would usually use a design programme for such precise perfect colours as the colours are not only set as RGB like in Mapinfo.

Is there anyone who uses such outputs? Can I use an alternative output to save such quality images? (I do need to use Mapinfo via mapbasic too? so preferably it needs to be a programmable suggestion.)

Sarahg

Posted 10 December 2008 - 01:19 PM

If you want to have good color output from a press, you have to start by setting your colors in CMYK instead of RGB.

I think Mark Denil's advice in this post is very good and if you have the option of doing this, I would certainly recommend it.

Hi, and Thanks!

i am just getting used to these forums. Useful things! !.

I would love to set it to CMYK - but I don't think you can set it to CMYK in Mapinfo - I wonder if there is a good plugin or add on which is advised or whether exporting to a separate medium is better. This is a big problem! Someone must have had a similar problem? I was linked to this - which is a good start as it shows what the colours are for Mapinfo but it does not quite help with a resource to knowing what printing colours are needed. http://www.tydac.ch/color/

Sarahg

Posted 10 December 2008 - 03:26 PM

Sarahg

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Germany

I am not sure how much it will help this particular problem you are right there.
But it does look like a great resource I can use anyway!
Cheers! A smile even after over 13 hours at the office!
experiment yes I know a big key here ... time is also one! As these maps only a small part! Just getting them right seems to take FOREVER!
But great! Thanks a lot for that one. I will check it out later

Dennis McClendon

Posted 10 December 2008 - 03:52 PM

Dennis McClendon

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Location:Chicago

Interests:map design, large-scale maps of cities

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ColorBrewer offers RGB and CMYK equivalents, and of course programs such as Photoshop allow you to switch back and forth. So I would begin by determining a palette of CMYK colors, guided by ColorBrewer, and making sure they reproduce as you want on press (which may require dropping each color by a couple of points to compensate for press gain). You might be able to include a small test bar within an actual press run. Then go back and put the RGB equivalents into MapInfo.

Unit Seven

Posted 10 December 2008 - 06:23 PM

One major problem going to newspaper from rgb is you lack of overprint control and pure black generation which is quite crucial in press output and more often noticable in newspaper printing.

If at all possible I'd take your output from Mapinfo into Illustrator/CorelDraw/Freehand (or inkscape which I haven't used but is a open source alternative) and set your cmyk colours and overprints. Do some research on registration, overprints, and trapping as press rigistration on newspapers is often a problem. I realise this is another learning curve of quite a different type of software but if you are going to be doing a few of these it will be worthwhile. Possibly the newspaper have someone in their Illustration dept. that could take the pdfs off you and then do these colour adjustments for the press?